1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a body fluid excretion measurement apparatus for medical application. The measurement apparatus automatically and continuously records the body fluid excretion (urine and the like) after patients' surgery. This invention relates to improvement of the measurement apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In clinical treatment, especially in surgery, monitoring volume of body fluid excretion of patients is very important for appropriate treatment by doctors. Excretion volume of body fluid (such as blood or urine) is an important datum that reflects the state of patients' recovery. For example, the volume of urine indicates patients' state of recovery after abdominal surgery.
One of conventional measuring methods of body fluid is to store body fluid in a baggy container with a measuring cylinder, and measure the volume manually (Japanese Patent Laid Open No. Sho 46-16464 and Japanese Patent Laid Open No. Sho 57-166147).
Another conventional measuring method is to store body fluid (for example, urine) of a patient in a container, and pours the content into urine container as droplets to measure the volume (Japanese Patent Laid Open No. Sho 57-57524). This method is implemented for practical use.
Further conventional measuring method is to weigh the urine container to obtain the urine volume (Japanese Patent Laid Open No. Sho 60-203237 and Japanese Patent Laid Open No. Sho 63-71008).
All the above conventional methods, however, require a worker to assist the measurement. After the surgery, long term monitoring of the excretion volume is necessary and unit of the measurement can be a whole day. Therefore, it is very difficult to perform the manual measurement.
With the first conventional method, periodic replacement of measuring cylinders is necessary, and increasing the frequency of the replacement enormously increases the load of workers. With the second method, the droplets measuring method, a droplet generation capillary can be blocked with suspension particle in urine, which disables the measurement. With the third method, changes in urine density decrease the accuracy of the measurement. Another problem is that the size of the system tends to become large and expensive. Therefore, automated, continuous body fluid excretion measurement apparatus with simple structure has been desired in the field of clinical treatment.